Dark on the Other Side (25 page)

“Hiding it wouldn’t take more than a few seconds. It must
have been here for several days, Michael. Because the summoning that
brought you to Andrea’s didn’t come from me. There’s only one person
who could have sent it.”

“The idea had occurred to me. But I can’t think of any
reason why he should do such a thing.”

“His reasons aren’t comprehensible to normal people. I
can think of an analogy, though: the pathologically jealous husband who
keeps accusing his wife of infidelity until finally, in sheer
desperation, she goes out and acquires a lover.”

“Yeah, I knew a guy like that. His wife finally left him,
and he took it as proof that he’d been right about her all along. All
right.” Michael stood up. “I’ll search the place. The fact that Briggs
was so ostentatious about removing the notebook might have been a
bluff, to conceal the existence of something else.”

He was not willing to admit, even to himself, the flaw in
his reasoning: that if Briggs had removed the notebook, it might be
because Gordon no longer needed it. Once the link was established…

When he had finished his search, the apartment was neater
than it had been for months. He found nothing, but he was aware that
the negative results were not conclusive. Unless he tore furniture and
walls to pieces, he could not be sure that some small object was not
still concealed.

He searched the bedroom last, at Linda’s request; he knew
that, as twilight closed in, she wanted him near by, where he could
watch her. She seemed convinced of her theory of a physical link;
Michael found it weaker and less convincing the longer he thought about
it.

Napoleon, fully restored to health and malevolence, was
still with them. Curled up on the foot of the bed, he watched Michael
suspiciously.

Michael backed out of the interior of the wardrobe,
carrying the pile of dirty shirts he had inspected several times
before. He shook each one out, feeling in the pockets, and dropping
them one by one to the floor as he finished. He viewed the untidy pile
indecisively, and then shrugged and left it there.

“Can you think of any place I missed?” he asked.

“No.” Linda’s voice was strained. “Michael, it’s almost
dark.”

“Not yet.”

“Yes. Now.” She held out her hands.

When he had done it, Michael was shaking. It got worse
every time he did it. Napoleon’s disapproval didn’t help matters. The
cat protested so violently that Michael finally had to shut him in the
bathroom.

“All right,” he said, straightening up after he had tied
the final knot. “That’s it. I’m not going to gag you, I don’t see the
need for it; and anyhow, it is simply too goddamn much for me to
stomach.”

“Okay,” she said submissively.

Michael had turned on the lights; the darkness outside
was complete. The lamp by the bed cast a warm glow on Linda’s face, and
he was outraged to see that she was smiling. Maybe she felt better this
way. He sure as hell didn’t.

He couldn’t look at her any longer. He couldn’t stand the
thoughts that kept worming into his mind. Abruptly, he turned and
blundered out of the room; when he was out of her sight he leaned up
against the wall, his head resting on his arm. It was barely seven
o’clock. How in the name of God was he going to get through the rest of
the night?

It was the hour of midnight he dreaded most.
Superstition…but no more mad than any of the other things that had
happened. He forced himself back to Linda and found, as people usually
do, that he could stand it, and would stand it, because he had to.

They talked, but no longer of theories and
interpretations. They spoke of defense, like the decimated garrison of
a beleaguered fortress. But the weapons they discussed were not in any
modern arsenal.

“I don’t happen to have any holy water on hand,” Michael
said, driven to a fruitless sarcasm. “Ran out last week.…It didn’t help
Andrea, remember?”

“Could you—could you pray?” she asked diffidently.

“No.” Michael looked at her. “Yes. I could pray. If I
knew What to pray to.”

The idea came into both their minds at the same moment,
or else she read his face with uncanny quickness.

“You can’t do that,” she said.

“Why not? If we’re right—or even if we’re wrong. Any kind
of mental assurance, confidence—”

“Not that kind, no—there’s a limit, Michael. It would be
spiritual prostitution, unimaginably worse than any physical
contamination. You couldn’t do it—not if you really believed. And if
you didn’t, it would just be a dirty game.”

Again Michael was reminded of the gulf between their
minds. His idea of trying to fight Gordon on his own ground had been
partly a counsel of desperation, partly an academic theory. There was
nothing academic about Linda’s attitude; she looked sick with disgust.

“Besides,” she went on; her voice was shaking. “Besides,
you’d be a novice, a probationer. He’s studied these things for years.
All you would do is weaken yourself, don’t you see? He could walk right
into your mind and destroy it.”

“Okay, okay. It was just an idea. Then what can we do?”

Linda relaxed.

“Do you love me?” she asked.

The question was so unexpected that it caught Michael off
guard.

“Someone asked me that, once,” he said slowly.

“Well?”

“I said I didn’t know what the word meant. I still don’t.
But I love you.”

“Then love me. No—” His hand came toward her and she
shook her head. “Don’t touch me, don’t think of touching me. Think of
love. Not of desire; they aren’t the same. I don’t know what love means
either. But most people confuse loving with being loved. Love isn’t
reciprocal. It doesn’t ask, or expect, or demand. It isn’t an emotion,
it’s a state of being. Love me, Michael.”

“It sounds rather one-sided to me,” Michael said; for the
life of him, he could not have kept the bitterness out of his voice.
“And also rather esoteric. You aren’t talking to Saint Francis, you
know.”

“I noticed that…. Oh, Michael, I’m sorry! I’m sorry
you’re involved in this, I’m sorry for talking to you like a third-rate
mystic, I’m sorriest of all for asking, demanding, and not offering you
anything in return. I haven’t anything to give, not any longer. I did
once; I think I did…. But I lost it, somewhere along the way, when
Gordon taught me his way of loving. He does love me, you know. He calls
it that. And I’m almost as bad as he is now; the only difference is
that I know that that insatiable demand is not love, but a perversion
of it. That’s why I can’t fight him. But you can.”

Without answering, Michael stood up and walked across the
room. From Linda’s earnest confusion of half-digested philosophy he
derived only despair. Even if they fought their way out of the present
crisis, there was no future for him with a woman who was literally
frightened to death of loving. She was sick, incurably sick, if she
could believe what she said she believed. Like most theories, hers
sounded fine on the surface; but if love was not reciprocal, only the
saints could derive much satisfaction from it. A normal human being had
only so much to give without getting something in return. Depletion was
inevitable.

And this present situation, which she had talked him
into, was impossible. Linda was immobilized, defenseless. If she was
wrong—and she had to be wrong!—about her idea of vulnerability through
the lack of love, then he was as susceptible to mental invasion as she
was. The logic of Gordon’s next move came to him so strongly that it
was as if he had read the other’s mind. Even if Linda had not been
bound, she would be no match for him; he was stronger and heavier. She
could scream; and she would, as long as she had breath left with which
to scream, long enough for the neighbors to call the police, who would
not arrive in time…. They would find him standing there, over the
bloody thing on the bed. Gordon would keep control over him that long.
Just that long. He would release the mental bonds in time for Michael
to see, and comprehend, what he had done….

Just in time, Michael realized what was happening. He
flung himself around, grasping blindly at the first solid object that
came within reach. Something rocked under the thrust of his body,
something fell and crashed; and he found himself leaning against the
big dresser, his arms grasping it as a drowning man would clutch an
oar. A broken ashtray lay on the floor. His face was streaming with
perspiration, and his heart pounded as if he had been running a race.
Something else was pounding—an irate neighbor, from the floor below.
The howls of Napoleon, imprisoned in the bathroom, were loud enough to
wake the dead.

“Michael! Michael—is something wrong?”

How long had she been calling him? With an enormous
effort, Michael removed his hands from the dresser and turned around.

“It’s all right,” he said thickly; and then said it
again, because his voice had been almost inaudible.

He saw Linda staring at him. There was concern in her
face, but no fear; apparently the meaning of his sudden movement had
escaped her.

“What is it?” she repeated.

“Liver, or something,” Michael said promptly. His voice
and body were once again under his control. The mental grasp had left
his mind, but he derived no comfort from his victory. This might have
been only a preliminary, testing thrust. He knew that he did not dare
tell Linda what had happened.

“Hadn’t you better let Napoleon out?” she asked. “He’s
beside himself.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah.”

Michael opened the door warily, putting himself into a
posture of defense. Napoleon’s shrieks stopped abruptly, but he did not
appear; looking around the corner of the door, Michael saw him crouched
in the farthest corner, behind the hamper.

“It’s all right,” he said. “You can come out now.”

The cat refused to move until Linda called him. He curled
up on the foot of the bed.

“I’ll make some coffee,” Michael mumbled, and fled
without waiting for an answer.

He got to the kitchen before his legs gave way, and
collapsed into a chair, letting his head drop down onto the table. For
a long time he sat and shook, while his mind raced desperately from one
blank wall to another. He had thought, when he fought Linda for his
life, that that was the worst thing that could happen. He knew now that
he had yet to experience the worst. If he hurt Linda, Gordon wouldn’t
have to take any further steps; he would sit screaming in a cell for
the rest of his life, until he found some means of ending it. And even
this might not be the ultimate disaster. Gordon had a fertility of
imagination that was far beyond his own feeble concepts of evil….

And the end of it all was that there was nothing he could
do. He was boxed into a corner. Whatever he did now would be dangerous.
He could lock himself in one room and Linda in another; but his
controlled mind would find some means of breaking through any barricade
he could construct. He could go out, and smash a window, or insult a
cop, and maybe get thrown in jail—if he could find a cop willing to
arrest him. That would leave Linda alone, at the mercy of whatever
attack Gordon planned next. He could let the police take Linda—which
would be just what Gordon wanted. If he untied her, and begged her to
immobilize him, she would know what had happened, and with her
susceptibility to suggestion—or mental control, call it what you
liked—she would then become his Nemesis, instead of the reverse. There
was no way out.

The sound of knocking roused him, after a timeless
interval of sheer despair; and he was, somehow, not surprised to
realize that his lips were moving soundlessly in words he hadn’t used
since childhood. He moved like a machine to answer the door. Neither
hope nor fear drove him; he was simply geared to accept, and deal with,
whatever was there.

For a few seconds after he had opened the door he stood
with his mouth slightly ajar, assessing the man on the threshold as he
might have studied a perfect stranger. The tall, spare figure and
unlined face; the odd, silvery-gray eyes and the close-cropped hair
that was a matching silver…Galen had been gray ever since Michael had
known him. He carried a light suitcase and a top-coat. No hat. Galen
never wore a hat.

Michael stepped back, throwing the door wide.

“How did you know I wanted you?” he asked.

“I called from the airport,” Galen said prosaically. He
threw his coat onto a chair and put his case down on the floor beside
it. “Henry said you’d been phoning all day.”

His gaze swept the room and returned to Michael; and the
latter was conscious of his appearance, which was both haggard and
unkempt. He ran his hand self-conciously over the stubble of beard on
his jaw and glanced down at his unspeakable shirt—rumpled,
sweat-stained, dirty—before meeting Galen’s eyes.

“I’m glad you’re back,” he said inadequately.

“Why?”

Michael opened his mouth, and closed it again. Coherent
explanation was beyond him.

“You might as well see the worst,” he said. “Come into
the bedroom.”

He had always admired Galen’s phlegm, and wondered what
degree of shock it would take to startle him out of it. He found out.
Galen paled visibly at the sight that met his eyes.

Flat on the bed, arms outstretched and bound, ankles tied
to the footboard, Linda looked like a character out of one of the books
Michael never read, much less wrote. Apparently she had recognized
Galen’s voice; she was not surprised to see him, but she blushed
slightly as the incredulous gray eyes swept over her.

“It isn’t what you think,” she said.

“I’m not sure what I think.” Galen sat down in the
nearest chair. “Give me a minute to catch my breath. Michael…”

Michael talked. It was an unspeakable relief; he knew how
Linda had felt all those months, bottling up her fears. He talked
without critical intent or editing, mixing theory and fact,
interpretation and actuality. And Galen listened. He blinked, a little
more often than was normal, but his face had smoothed out into its
professional mask. Michael finished with an account of the mental
attack he had just experienced. Linda, who was hearing this for the
first time, gasped audibly, but Galen went on nodding.